Archive of Our Own

I.

“You can’t see anything, can you?” Bruce says, his hands warm where they’re around Dick’s shoulders, steering him through the manor.

“Well, no,” Dick says, because of course Bruce wouldn’t mess up tying a blindfold, and even when he opens his eyes all he can see is black, “but I don’t know what the point is. I can tell we’re going to the garage.”

Bruce is taking the long and repetitive way through the manor’s halls, but he’s trained Dick too well for him to be tricked by a few unnecessary turns. He voices the thought he’d had since Bruce pressed the blindfold against his eyes. “Is this a training exercise?”

“It’s a surprise,” Bruce says, which is sometimes another word for ‘training exercise’.

Bruce opens the door to the garage, and even if Dick had lost his way, he’d be able to tell it was the garage from that particular creaking of the door, combined with the smell of expensive motor oil. Bruce presses a hand against his back, guiding him in.

The automatic lights click on as they enter, but Dick’s vision stays pitch black. Bruce uses his hand on Dick’s back to steer him deeper in, and Dick plots their steps against his mental map of the garage, in case Bruce plans on asking him which car they’re stopping in front of. It’s the Countach, he’s pretty sure.

“Close your eyes,” Bruce says, and Dick squeezes his eyes shut. Bruce’s hands work at the back of Dick’s head, and the blindfold falls away. “All right, open.”

Dick opens his eyes, expecting the white Lamborghini, and is privately disappointed when he catches a glimpse of bright red. It’s the 959, then—it’s the only red car Bruce has because he doesn’t really like red, and only ended up with this one because Brucie Wayne wanted to be able to brag about managing to import one.

But then Dick takes in the rest of the car, and it obviously isn’t the 959. It isn’t even a Porsche at all.

“Happy birthday, Dick,” Bruce says, before Dick can ask.

“For me?” Dick gapes at the bright red Ferrari F40. He’s drooled over it in magazines, but he’s never dreamed of even touching one, much less driving one. He’s never even mentioned it to Bruce at all, not even in passing.

“You’re sixteen now,” Bruce says, “which means you can start driving—as far as the state of New Jersey is concerned, at least,” he adds with a wry smile. They both know Dick’s been driving for a lot longer than that.

“But you’ve already got so many other cars! You didn’t have to get another one just for me. And it’s so expensive—”

“I bought it for you because I knew you wanted it,” Bruce says, putting a hand on Dick’s shoulder that Dick leans into on instinct, “and it was something I could give. If only it was always so easy.” He’s silent for a second, and Dick knows Bruce is thinking of what he’s always wanted most: his parents back.

Dick’s not sure how to tell him that Dick hasn’t had the same wish in a long time.

“Now,” Bruce says, before Dick can say anything, “what do you say we take her for a spin?”

He lobs the keys underhand in a high arc, and Dick catches them with both hands. He looks up at Bruce. “I haven’t actually gotten my permit yet.”

“I doubt GCPD will be waiting to ticket us on the driveway,” Bruce says, and Dick grins.

It was a rush to see the car and know Bruce bought it for him; it’s an even bigger one to drive it with Bruce beside him in the passenger seat, calmly clinging on to the armrest as Dick whoops his way around the curves. He’s been down this road so many times that he takes the turns on instinct more than thought, and he goes a little—or a lot—faster than he probably should, but Bruce doesn’t stop him, just throws him a wild, heart-stopping grin that Dick immediately returns.

By the time they’re back in the garage, Dick’s heart is going as fast as it does in the middle of a good fight, and he feels just as winded. He unbuckles his seatbelt and launches himself over the center console, putting one knee next to the gear shift and throwing his arms around Bruce. “Thank you, Bruce.”

Bruce hugs him back, a hand in his hair cupping the back of his head and holding them together. “I know this isn’t the most… sentimental gift, but—”

Dick shakes his head and squeezes him harder. He’s known for years—ever since he overheard Bruce talking about it with Alfred—that Bruce had a hard time thinking of gifts for him. Bruce never even celebrated his own birthday after his parents died, not until Dick was there, cluelessly planning cake and gifts because Alfred hadn’t stopped him. Anything from Bruce is worth the world to him.

“This is perfect, Bruce, really. You’re the best.” He leans up to peck Bruce’s cheek, but Bruce turns his head at the same time, and their lips touch.

Dick should flinch back; he freezes, instead. Because he’s thought about it—kissing Bruce—but only as a private, impossible fantasy. He’s never thought of actually doing it because he knows it’s top on the list of things he can never do, ever, because if he did, Bruce would—

Dick pulls back, much too late, and claps his hand over his mouth. “S-Sorry,” he says, staring at Bruce’s midsection instead of his face. Bruce’s hands are in his lap, fingers laced together with enough force to make the tips of them white. “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s all right,” Bruce says, distantly polite. There’s still tension in his fingers. “But, considering you’re sixteen now… I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to continue doing this.”

Real fear trickles through Dick at the thought of being shut out. “Doing what?”

“This.” Bruce gently pushes Dick away by the shoulder, so that he’s fully back in the driver’s seat, and then withdraws his arm so that he’s fully on the other side of the console.

The distance between them suddenly feels uncrossable.

“You aren’t a child anymore,” Bruce says. “There are some behaviors that you should have outgrown.”

Dick knows—knows that Bruce is older than him, and that Bruce raised him, and that in some ways that makes Bruce his father, even though in a lot of other ways he isn’t. There’s only a certain kind of love allowed between them, and Dick’s tried so hard to cram his feelings into that box and bury away everything else that didn’t fit.

But still, he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with touching Bruce on his shoulder or his arm or his back, or hugging him, or kissing him on the cheek. And Bruce had seemed fine with it, too, before. Dick just made a mistake, this time—one little mistake, and not even on purpose.

“I really didn’t mean to,” Dick says, and it sounds like he’s begging, even to him.

“I know,” Bruce says, but he doesn’t take back his words, and even long after they’ve left the garage, he doesn’t reach out to touch Dick again.

II.

The longer Dick lays in bed nursing his wounds, the angrier he gets.

He gets shot once in the almost ten years he’s been doing this, and suddenly Bruce doesn’t think Dick’s fit to be his partner? Suddenly Bruce is calling him a child, like Dick isn’t eighteen years old and more experienced than practically every other hero active right now?

His simmering urge to scream boils over, and he finds himself marching his way downstairs. Bruce has been hiding ever since he made his proclamation, and Dick thinks he’s probably hoping Dick will leave without confrontation.

Too bad for him; Dick has never been in the habit of making things easy for Bruce, and he sure as hell isn’t going to start now.

"Can I help you?" Bruce says without turning from the computer, and that pisses Dick off enough to storm over there and grab the back of his chair.

“Yeah,” he says, yanking it around and forcing Bruce to face him, for all the good it does while Bruce still has the Bat to hide behind. “You can tell me the real reason you want me gone so badly.”

Bruce stares impassively back from behind the cowl. “You’re overreacting.”

“Me?” Dick says, and whatever sound his laugh makes as it comes out, it makes Bruce’s lips twitch downwards. “You smiled at me and told me to get out of your life just because I got a little shot and you say I’m overreacting?”

“That was not a little—”

Dick shoves a finger in his face. “Don’t you dare sit there and act like you haven’t gone out with worse.”

Bruce gnashes his teeth. He’s mad, so mad, but so is Dick, so Bruce is just going to have to deal with it.

“I’m not a child anymore—”

“You’re eighteen.”

“And when I was sixteen, you told me I was too old for hugs and kisses, so I’m pretty sure—” Dick cuts himself off. It was a subtle thing, and hard to see under all the layers of Batsuit, but he was pretty sure he saw Bruce twitch—a telling twitch. He laughs, in disbelief this time. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Robin—” Bruce says, like that name in that voice would make Dick any more likely to shut up and do what he says.

Two things in life are certain: Bruce will give orders, and Dick will challenge them if he thinks they’re bull.

This is bull.

Dick steps forward into the space between Bruce’s legs and grabs onto the back of the chair so Bruce can’t shove him away. “You haven’t ever touched me since then, not like you used to.”

After the accidental kiss, Bruce disappeared for a month, and Dick hoped things would at least be somewhat normal between them after he came back—even just the occasional brief hug or shoulder pat would’ve been better than nothing.

He got nothing.

“I thought you were doing it for me,” Dick says. “So I would learn to get over it. But you were doing it for yourself, weren’t you?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

But Dick does know. Bruce is a man who prides himself on self-control, and he must hate the fact that Dick can challenge it just by standing beside him. And the older Dick gets, the more challenging it’ll become—so of course Bruce would try to send him away before it’s too late.

Of course.

“I’m not a child anymore. You know that.” Dick leans in closer and peers directly into the white lenses shielding Bruce’s eyes. He may not be able to see Bruce’s gaze, but he can feel it—and, this close, there’s nowhere else Bruce can look but at him. “I’m not even your ward anymore. It’s not illegal to—”

“Illegal or not, what you’re suggesting is inappropriate.” Bruce’s hands stay firmly fixed to the armrests, fingers curled over the ends. He won’t touch Dick anymore, not even to push him away, and that makes Dick seethe.

“Then stop me,” Dicks says, and grabs the back of his head and him.

It’s like kissing a block of concrete, though he thinks concrete might have more give. But even though Bruce’s mouth is firm and dry and unmoving under Dick’s, his hands squeeze the armrests so hard that the cracking of plastic echoes throughout the cave, and Dick, feeling vicious in his victory, nips Bruce’s bottom lip as he draws back, just far enough to see Bruce’s face.

Bruce’s expression is still unreadable under his cowl, but the way his breathing has picked up betrays him. His hands are holding the shattered remains of the armrests in place.

“Get out,” Bruce growls into the inches between them.

The roughness of his voice is another sign of weakness—but if Dick presses forward now, all he’ll do is break them both.

If they can even be more broken than they already are.

“Fine,” Dick breathes, and pushes himself off the chair. “If that’s what you really want, then fine.” He turns to leave. “Goodbye, Bruce. I hope you enjoy being alone.”

Bruce doesn’t respond.

Dick knows he never will.

III.

“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Dick says as he climbs out of his car to see Batman standing there, fully suited up and waiting for him—and also visibly fuming.

Good.

Dick told Jason to send along the message that he’d be coming by in hopes of pissing Bruce all the way off. It’s what he deserves, after letting Dick hear about the new Robin and the new Wayne adoptee from the news instead of from Bruce’s mouth.

“You tried to say you couldn’t handle working with an eighteen-year-old child, and now here you are,” Dick says lightly. He slams the car door shut. “Trading in for a younger model?”

Bruce snaps immediately. “You dare to show your face here and—”

His anger catches Dick’s like a wildfire. “You’re the one who hasn’t said a single word to me these past eighteen months and—”

“—accusing me of misconduct against someone you haven’t even—”

“—maybe if you’d told me about him then I wouldn’t—”

“—no longer your concern, and I don’t owe you an explanation for—“

“Yes,” Dick shouts over him, “you do!”

The Cave falls silent.

They’d drifted toward each other during their argument, and now they’re close enough that Dick can practically feel the warmth of Bruce’s chest as they both catch their breaths.

Dick reins himself in and says, in a voice acceptable for reasonable discussion, “You kicked me out, just to welcome someone else in. I have the right to know why.”

“You—”

“And I have the right to have you answer me without the damn mask this time.”

Bruce stares at him for a few seconds, then, slowly, lowers the cowl. His face is fixed in a stern expression, and still as coldly handsome as Dick remembers—far more handsome than any photograph could hope to capture.

Dick misses him. For all Dick hates him, Dick misses him more.

“You already know the answer,” Bruce says.

“I know you’re scared of me,” Dick says, and Bruce doesn’t deny it with his expression or with his voice. “But you took him in anyway. Why?”

“He isn’t you.”

It’s like Bruce always has a knife aimed precisely at Dick’s heart. “You’re gonna want to elaborate on that,” Dick says, very calmly.

“He isn’t you,” Bruce repeats. “And I’m not who I was back then, either. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.”

Dick’s smile feels as sharp as the knife Bruce just stabbed him with. “I know you didn’t just call me a mistake.”

“The relationship between us— You should never have been my partner.”

Another knife. Dick clenches his fist. “So what’s the new kid, then?”

“Jason is my son,” Bruce says. “As you should have been.”

But Dick wasn’t. And Dick was. Dick was everything to Bruce, and nothing, and it was the same the other way around, and Dick never did have the right words to describe what exactly they were to each other. They just were. And that was enough for him.

He thought it was enough for Bruce, too.

“So you wanted a son,” Dick says, voice hollow.

“I—” Bruce says, and falters. His hand twitches, just slightly, and Dick thinks Bruce might have reached out to touch him, if Bruce would ever let himself touch Dick again. The hand squeezes into a fist, and Bruce turns away slightly, concealing his expression. “I don’t enjoy being alone.”

Dick’s heart pangs, out of guilt this time. “I know,” he says. “I only said that—”

“To hurt me?” Bruce says. “I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dick says, even though he did want to, and he did. “I never—”

“I was lonely,” Bruce says. He still isn’t facing Dick. “I was lonely, and I missed you, but I can never and will never ask you to return. Is that the answer you wanted to hear?”

Dick takes a step forward, fully closing the distance between them, and gently presses a hand against Bruce’s cheek. Bruce resists for a second, then lets himself be turned.

Dick stretches up on tiptoe, cradles Bruce’s face in both hands, and says, softly, “You can always ask.”

Then Dick kisses him.

Bruce’s hands stay clenched in fists at his sides, but his mouth yields under Dick’s, lips parting and moving with his. He tastes of salt and Gotham smog and home, and it’s in this moment Dick realizes that, if he ever let himself feel exactly how much he missed Bruce before, he wouldn’t have survived it.

He grabs the back of Bruce’s head, yanking him down to kiss him more firmly. Bruce’s mouth opens against his immediately, and his hands land on Dick’s waist and stay there, flexing and relaxing and flexing and relaxing like he wants to push Dick away, but can’t bring himself to do it.

Dick is selfishly glad for it, even if he knows this can’t last.

Eventually, he relaxes his grip, sliding his hands from Bruce’s hair to the sides of his neck as he pulls away. Bruce leans forward slightly, chasing after him for a fleeting, flattering half-second before he remembers himself and stops.

He takes hold of Dick’s wrists. His fingers rest lightly on the backs of Dick’s hands, and even that bit of touch is enough to send a thrill through him. Gently, so gently, Bruce pulls Dick’s hands off him and lowers them between their bodies.

“This can’t happen again,” he says quietly.

“Bruce—” Dick starts, but doesn’t go on. He doesn’t have the words to argue, not when he already knows this is the only way it could have ended.

Bruce squeezes his hands briefly, then lets them drop. “I would appreciate it if you left now,” he says, in that same quiet voice. “Please.”

Dick tries clenching a fist, tries mustering up the strength to fight for him—for them.

But this was a battle lost long before it ever even started.

Dick takes a step backward. Bruce’s gaze doesn’t follow, fixed to the ground.

“Goodbye, Bruce,” Dick says, and leaves him.

IV.

Dick startles awake to find himself halfway out of the Batmobile with Bruce’s arms around his back and under his knees. Bruce doesn’t drop him the second Dick starts moving, but it’s a near thing.

“You’re all right,” Bruce says, and it sounds like he’s assuring himself as much as he’s assuring Dick.

“I’m all right,” Dick promises, getting himself out of Bruce’s hold and onto his own two tired feet. “Sore as hell, but that’s about expected.”

Bruce eyes the side of Dick’s head, and Dick winces as he recalls the tire iron. Having Dick falling unconscious after that was probably the last thing Bruce needed.

“We’re doing a full exam,” Bruce says.

Dick would normally argue against it on account of feeling perfectly fine, but it’s been a long enough night—and a long enough month—that it isn’t worth it. “All right.”

He submits to all of Bruce’s clinical poking and prodding without complaint, and does his best to look everywhere and nowhere so he can avoid thinking too much about the fact that Jason’s existence has been scrubbed from the cave. Even after Dick was unceremoniously kicked out, Bruce still kept their mementos on display, as well as Dick’s old Robin suit.

But it’s as if Jason was never there.

He’s gone, permanently, in a way that Dick never was.

Alfred joins in on the poking and prodding for a while, but Bruce sends him off to bed after they confirm Dick isn’t at risk of dying anytime soon. Then Bruce spends another fifteen minutes presumably making sure Dick isn’t at risk of dying at all.

“You’re all clear,” Bruce says, almost grudgingly, as he reviews the last of the blood test results.

“Thank you,” Dick says to his back, and Bruce grunts in acknowledgment. “Did you grab my bike?”

Bruce’s hand pauses for a quarter of a second over the keyboard. “It’s safe. You can pick it up tomorrow.”

His bike has an autopilot mode that tethers to the Batmobile, like a tow without a hitch. All of Dick’s bikes have had it, ever since he was Robin. Bruce could claim plausible deniability—he doesn’t know much about Dick’s Nightwing gear, for obvious reasons—but it’s suspicious that he didn’t even try.

It’s more likely that the oversight was intentional—that he abandoned Dick’s bike to ask Dick to stay without asking.

“I’m guessing Alfred’s already made up my room?”

“It’s always ready,” Bruce says, without looking at him. “In case.”

Dick waits for Bruce to elaborate, but he doesn’t. All right. Dick’s going to have to unpack that later, when he isn’t staying conscious through sheer force of will.

“I’m washing up,” he says, and goes and does just that.

He emerges to find Bruce out of the Batsuit and idling by the elevator, waiting for it to open. He pointedly doesn’t ask how long Bruce has been standing there listening for Dick’s footsteps before pushing the button.

The elevator comes, and they take it together upstairs in silence. They stop in front of Dick’s room—and it was still his room, Alfred assured him, even though he’s barely been in it since he left.

Dick steps inside, ready to close the door behind him, but the ghost of things left unsaid hovers close.

He could have died tonight, and left those things unsaid forever—left Bruce with only memories of Dick’s anger and blame.

He tightens his grip on the doorknob. “Listen, Bruce,” he says softly. “I—”

“If you’re going to apologize,” Bruce says, “don’t. We both know I owe you more.”

Dick’s lip quirks despite himself. He lets his hand slip off the knob as he turns and faces Bruce. “So we’ll cancel out a few from your end, then? Is that how this works?”

Bruce looks chagrined. “Dick,” he says, haltingly, “I—”

Dick regrets teasing him right away. Jason’s death still looms over them—and now Zucco’s, and Taft’s. He already feels hollowed out by the events of the past week, and he doesn’t want Bruce to carve out more of himself for him.

He leans over, takes Bruce’s face into his hands, and kisses him before he can get any further.

Bruce freezes, like he has every time Dick’s kissed him—but only for a second, this time, before he surges against Dick, driving him backward into the room until his knees hit the foot of the bed and his back hits the mattress.

Bruce follows him down without hesitation, bracketing him in with his body and holding Dick’s head in place for him to take and take and take. Dick buries his hands in Bruce’s hair, holding him close, and lets Bruce drink his fill. The world may be falling apart around them, but in here—in here, together, they’re safe.

When Bruce breaks away, it’s to wrap his arms around Dick’s shoulders and bury his face against Dick’s neck. “When I saw you lying there…” he says, a soft rumble against the hollow of Dick’s throat.

Dick combs his fingers through Bruce’s hair, the other arm wrapped securely around Bruce’s back. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m okay.”

Bruce sits up slightly and looks Dick in the eyes, his gaze serious and deadly. “You,” he says, “do not die before I do.”

It’s an impossible, childish request, and not something Dick could ever promise, but Bruce should know that already. He just wants some kind of reassurance that he won’t lose everything and everyone—not again.

And Dick can’t bring himself to deny him anything.

He kisses Bruce—on the middle of his forehead, and then on his mouth. “I won’t,” he says, fervently enough he can almost make himself believe it. “I won’t.”

V.

There’s a moment, after Dick wakes in the hospital bed in the medical bay of the Batcave, when he wonders if it would have been better if he’d died with his city. If, after all the ways he’d failed—Blockbuster, Catalina, Slade, Blüdhaven—it would have been a fitting end to his story.

And then Bruce puts it into words—says, “You’ve been trying to kill yourself for the past six months,” —and it feels like a slap to the face.

“No!” Dick says instinctively, because thinking about it in passing doesn’t mean he was actually trying. He was trying to save them. He was trying to save everyone. “Bruce, it’s not like that.”

“You made me a promise,” Bruce says, expression stoic behind the cowl. “Or have you forgotten?”

“I—”

He had, is the thing.

Or, to be more accurate, it hadn’t been something he thought much about after Blockbuster’s death—after Blockbuster was killed, and Dick had stood by and let it happen. He’d done the very thing he’d accused Bruce of doing to Zucco, but at least Bruce could truly claim innocence there. Dick could only claim weakness, and in that moment of weakness, he’d broken Bruce’s fundamental rule—the guiding tenet of both their lives.

Compared to that, his impossible promise seemed like nothing.

“You lost sight of the value of Roland Desmond’s life,” Bruce says. “If you need me to forgive you for that, I can. But I won’t forgive you for losing sight of the value of yours.”

He takes Dick’s jaw in one hand, gripping so hard it hurt. “You,” he says, “are mine, and you do not have the right to throw your life away over a single mistake. Do you understand me?”

Dick grabs Bruce’s forearm with both hands and squeezes, trying to get him to relax his grip. It doesn’t work. “I—”

“Do you,” Bruce says, “understand me?”

Most of the time, Bruce can shout and glare all he wants—it’s never effective at making Dick back down from him.

This time, guilt and shame and relief and gratefulness are all at war inside him, crossing his wires between Bruce-is-angry-with-me and Bruce-forgives-me and Bruce-is-hurting-me and I’m-his-I’m-his-I’m-still-his and suddenly he’s so painfully hard he can’t stand it.

“Yes,” he says, and his voice comes out breathy and weak. “Yes, I understand, please Bruce, please—”

He doesn’t specify what he’s asking for, and he isn’t even sure himself, but then Bruce has him on his back on the hospital bed, lips pressed together while his hands and knees keep Dick pinned, and it turns out to be exactly what Dick wanted.

“I’m sorry,” Dick whispers into Bruce’s mouth as clothes get thrown off and skin meets skin. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“You won’t do it again,” Bruce says as he shoves his way into Dick. “Never again.”

“Never.” Sparks dance behind Dick’s eyes. It hurts, so much, but at the same time, it feels like the stars have finally aligned. “Never,” he says again. “Never, never, never—”

They’ve never touched like this—have barely touched in years, even after reconciling—but it doesn’t matter. It always only takes a moment together for their hearts to start beating as one, and Dick will never feel lost or afraid in Bruce’s arms.

Bruce moves like he’s going to pull out, and Dick immediately crosses his ankles behind Bruce, locking him in. “Inside,” he says. “I want to feel you. I—”

Bruce groans, shattered, and buries himself inside Dick as he comes, teeth clamping down on Dick’s shoulder. Dick groans too and clenches hard, wanting everything Bruce can give him.

Wanting the proof of Bruce’s love.

Bruce stays inside him as he touches Dick’s cock. “You’re mine,” he says as Dick writhes. “And I won’t lose you. Not even to yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Dick says, faint and trembling with want.

“I don’t want your apologies,” Bruce says, touch firming. “I want your word.”

“You have it,” Dick says, because he would promise Bruce anything, anytime, anywhere. “You have me. I’m yours, Bruce, always, whatever you want to do with me, I’m yours, I’m—”

He breaks off with a cry as he comes all over Bruce’s fingers, and Bruce continues to touch him relentlessly. Dick lets him, riding the wave of pleasure and then drowning in the sensations until he’s past the point of overstimulation, trembling and exhausted and nothing but raw nerve endings for Bruce to touch and press and break.

Eventually, Bruce lets him go. Dick reaches for Bruce’s hand before it gets too far, threading their fingers together loosely. “Stay?”

Bruce doesn’t answer out loud, but he squeezes Dick’s hand and rests his weight more fully on top of Dick’s chest, blanketing him so fully that it’s almost hard for him to breathe.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

*

“I was thinking,” Dick says from his position sitting up on Bruce’s bed, “about Damian’s age.”

Bruce stares at him, then slowly closes the door. “What about it?”

“You went to Talia, didn’t you? When you disappeared after I kissed you back then. Accidentally kissed you.”

Bruce had crossed the room while Dick was speaking, and now stands beside the bed with his arms folded. “Was it,” he says, “an accident?”

Dick meets his gaze calmly. “It was,” he says, “that time. And you’re avoiding the question.”

“I don’t see the point in answering questions you already know the answer to.”

“Confirmation is nice,” Dick says, though Bruce’s non-answer is also confirmation enough. “So I sent you into a crisis with my accidental kiss, and you ran off and got Talia pregnant to try to get your mind off it. Did it work?”

Bruce looks Dick up and down, and pointedly doesn’t say anything.

Fair enough. Bruce doesn’t often let people into his room, much less on his bed—though Dick hasn’t been here in a while, on account of Bruce being presumed dead and all, and even before that, his presence here has been the exception, not the rule.

Nowadays, at least. There was a time, long ago, when that wasn’t true—when Dick was just as welcome in Bruce’s bed as he was his own.

And that’s the problem with them, isn’t it?

“Remember when I was little?” Dick says. “I had so many nightmares. I probably spent most of that first year sleeping in here with you.”

“Dick,” Bruce says, and it’s half-warning, half-shame.

“You should’ve stopped me,” Dick says softly. Never mind the fact that Dick should have been old enough to know better at the time—at all the times. That he should know better now.

He just can’t help but think about if, ten years from now, Damian tried to kiss him—

“I tried,” Bruce says.

“Right,” Dick says. “That’s why you fucked me in the same bed you used to sing me to sleep in. Because you tried.”

“I told you time and time again that it was inappropriate—”

“You saying it doesn’t matter if we still do it.”

“Did you want me to stop you?”

“I don’t,” Dick says, and Bruce’s gaze sharpens on him at the present tense. “But that doesn’t mean we should have.”

“No,” Bruce murmurs, watching him intently, “we shouldn’t have.”

“Especially,” Dick says, “if you can’t commit.”

Bruce reaches out, capturing Dick’s chin between his fist and his thumb. “I can commit.”

“Then prove it.”

Bruce’s lips meet Dick’s, and Dick opens his mouth immediately to welcome the sweep of Bruce’s tongue. He loops his arms around Bruce’s neck and tips backward, dragging Bruce down with him, and Bruce follows without resistance.

“I thought of you,” Bruce says between kisses, “every day.”

“I missed you,” Dick says, panting into his mouth. “So much, you don’t even know—”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Dick clenches his fists in Bruce’s hair, yanking on the strands at the roots. Bruce doesn’t even have the decency to wince. “You died.”

“Not truly.”

“We all thought so.”

“You kept Bruce Wayne alive,” Bruce says, palm curled against Dick’s cheek. “And Batman, despite my orders—”

“Well, unless you wanted Jason running around as Batman—”

Bruce kisses him quiet, and Dick lets him. Part of him still can’t believe it—any of it. That Bruce is alive, that Bruce is here, that Bruce is all around him and he can finally, finally breathe again.

Even after so long, Bruce still tastes of Gotham and home.

“You left me,” Dick says when Bruce draws back. “You don’t get to do that.”

Bruce cups his chin. “You have left of your own accord, far more than once.”

“I come back,” Dick says, grabbing Bruce’s wrist and squeezing. “I’ll always come back to you. But you—”

Bruce’s fingers tighten on his jaw. “You’re mine. I won’t leave you for someone else to take.”

Dick smiles, a vicious baring of his teeth. “Good.”

Bruce recaptures his mouth, hard enough their teeth clack together, but Dick doesn’t care, his hands busy wrestling their way under Bruce’s shirt, feeling the heat of his skin. When Bruce pushes his pants down and bullies his way inside, Dick spreads his legs wider for him, reveling in the stretch and burn and give.

“I want it to hurt tomorrow,” Dick pants, nails digging his marks into Bruce’s back. “I want it to be real.”

“This is real,” Bruce says, rocking inside him. “I’m real.”

“Prove it.”

Bruce’s lips and teeth maul his throat. His fingers press bruises into Dick’s hips and thighs. He slams into Dick so hard that Dick forgets where he is and screams. Bruce slaps a hand over his mouth, muffling him, and Dick’s eyes roll back into his head at the pressure of it—at how thoroughly he’s Bruce’s for the taking.

When he comes, it’s violent. Bruce replaces his hand with his lips and swallows Dick’s sobs into his open mouth. When Bruce comes, it’s with a vicious growl, crushing them together so tightly that not even Superman could have torn them apart. Dick digs his fingers into Bruce’s shoulders and holds him just as hard.

Slowly, slowly, they both come down. Bruce’s kiss eases into something gentler as his muscles relax, bit by bit. Eventually, he draws back, gaze locked on Dick’s.

Dick brushes Bruce’s sweaty bangs off his eyes, and caresses his face with both hands, thumbs sweeping over his cheekbones. “You don’t die before me," he says.

It’s an impossible vow. It’s a vow in direct conflict with the one Bruce made him swear to.

But Bruce presses his hands over the backs of Dick’s, squeezing his fingers in assurance, and says, “I won’t.”